Midnight Special (M). Director: Jeff Nichols. Starring: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Jaeden Lieberher, Adam Driver. 112 minutes
When we first meet Alton Meyer (Lieberher) — the enigmatic, miraculous child at the heart of this engrossing sci-fi drama — he is shawled in a white sheet, gazing upwards through a pair of blue goggles, his ears covered by a pair of bulky yellow earmuffs.
Within the context of the film there are practical reasons for these adornments, which we will soon learn. Visually however there is also a strong association here with an iconic image from Steven Spielberg's 1982 classic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; of that film's bulb-headed, blue-eyed hero, wrapped for discretion in a white blanket as he flees government agents.
Such associations are not accidental. Arkansas born filmmaker Nichols is known for his at-once intimate and mythic takes on Southern Gothic drama in films like Take Shelter and Mud; yet he sought in Midnight Special to explore a sub-genre of sci-fi government chase movie that was popular in the 1980s (along with E.T. Mark Lester's Firestarter comes vividly to mind). They are films that, in Nichols' words, contain a 'mystery that unfolds into some sense of awe'. And so we have Alton, an eight-year-old boy who possesses super-human powers, the nature and purpose of which is revealed gradually to characters and audience alike.
The pursuit of Alton is two-fold. On the one hand there is the heavily armed cult, led by the Southern Baptist styled preacher Calvin Meyer (Shepard), from which Alton has escaped under the care of his father Roy (Shannon). On the other, there are the government forces, personified by NSA operative Paul Sevier (Driver).
The cult is enamoured to Alton because of his penchant for emitting scintillating beams of light from his eyes (hence the aforementioned goggles); also for his apparent gift for speaking in tongues, and for making prophecies they believe predict an imminent day of divine judgement. To them, he is a possible saviour.
"This is apocalyptic imagery, but the Bible is only one of the film's many resonances and reference points."
Said prophecies, it turns out, contain classified data — hence the government's interest. Alton's gift is not for relaying divine communiqués, but for absorbing earthly telecommunications. It is a powerful gift that is not entirely within his ken or control; during one spectacular sequence, he pulls a satellite out of the sky, causing deadly fireballs to rain upon